...............................thesehearts-on-strings of thetenderest green things,.....................................risingfrom dirt then fallingtoward the floor,..............hanging......in the air like

2017-08-11

2017-08-09

I come off a little bit ventilatedbut you must realize the material worldis constantly crumbling under my eyesit's too much for the novel tongue I speakthe glitter of pavement in my brainstem, youmust accommodate the polytonal grimaceof the set lips becoming a smile, andyou must accept the thin section of armadvancing across your peripheries to grip youin pleasure, measuring feeling in your restraintWe have lived through the most furious littlechunk of history for this? that we mustunburden ourselves on night roof air, presumingthe poise and perks of champ pigeon teamsplaning the evening winds

2017-08-05

Today brought to mind the era of fish.
Are we heading against the tide?

Today brought to mind the era of amphibians.
Are we expanding our field of vision to include both sea and land?

Today brought to mind the era of reptiles.
Do I feel the naked form of the globe in my belly?

Today brought to mind the era of small nocturnal animals.
Can we survive without succumbing to dinosaur politics?

Today brought to mind the era of forest monkeys.
Can we contemplate a healthy life?

Today brought to mind the journey of Australopithecus.
Are we demolishing dead-end thinking with creativity?

Today brought to mind early humans, smiling and exhilarated.
Are we shouting out the awe of being alive?

Today brought to mind the arrival of people at the islands of Japan.
Should we discuss this with the people of Asia?
< Hello Friends To start, let’s disarm and shake hands>

Today should we try to tightly embrace DNA worn out from
living, the environment, and war?
< Hello Living in the mixture of all those eras of human history is great!
In this heart, the poem of humanity is crying with a smile on its face!>

Today I greeted a bird that was born unable to sing.
Will it walk across the lands known as authentic human society?

Making the most of the cell of a dream amidst reality—today,
with a new feeling, will we speak and share our voices?

2017-07-30

There was this stranger who came into our town
He was tall, and had a dark look about him
And a special brilliance was in his eyes
And when he looked at us
It was the feeling he could see right down to the bottom
We may have been mistaken in this
But at the time, no questions were asked
The questions always come later
All we cared about was the mystery we sensed in this stranger
And we waited to see what would happen

One evening, that was different from any other
He got us all together in the big auditorium
He stood there, on the huge stage
The only light was on him
And we waited in the dark
Then, out of his tallness came the chanting
First, as a whisper we could hardly hearThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bopThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bop
It didn't make any sense
We were caught up in something we didn't understand
He had trapped us, without our knowing it
Possibly it was his manner
And we came alive to him
As he slowly moved us with his chant
Through the land of hush
Into insistent, savage, throbbing crescendos of ecstasy
As if it were the only thing we could do
We started to chant with himThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bopThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bop
And he was up on the high stage, laughing with all his might
Shouting yes, yes, yes
But there were those among us who were jealous of his power
Who felt they should be in the center of the stage
With the light shining on them
They were against our hero
And the chanting
And our going to be with him every free moment
And so, little by little, a little later
These critics set to work
To make nonsense out of the sense of what we were doing
And they succeeded
They destroyed our hero's faith in himself
He didn't have it any more
After a few, disappointing times
In the big auditorium
The light gone out of him
We all stopped going
And the man who had once seemed so tall
And who now seemed so much smaller
Left our town
Saying no, no, no

We lived through the boredom of the time that followed
Telling each other pale stories of what once was
And what might have been if
We lived on histories and hopes
We did this
Until the miracle we never thought would happen again, happened
Another stranger came into our town
And he too was tall and dark
And had eyes that could look right down into the bottom of you
And he got us all together in the big auditorium
And with the light on him
We were in the dark
He chantedThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bopThe flibberty jib on the bipperty bop
And we joined in, and the magic was in us
And he was laughing
And all his might was with him
And he was shouting yes, yes, yes
But there were those among us who were jealous and so forth
You know, you know what they did

Little by little, a little later
They put us back on the narrow path
This is the way things have been in our town
For as long as anyone cares to remember
By the way
How are things in your town?

2017-07-28

Our first steps onto Manhattan were through Grand Central Terminal and while standing atop a terrace overlooking the main concourse, I had the stereotypical ‘they look like ants’ comment to my wife while watching the hurried, directed pace of the commuters. An image that came to haunt me an hour later when at the 9/11 Memorial andTribute Museum. I scolded myself for finding humor in aligning, even if ever so slightly, with those areas of thought that equate human life to an insect (although with reference to our fragility and at times our powerlessness, indeed, we are just like ants). As for the new World Trade Center complex, it is of a scale that can only be experienced in person. A Kubrick-like presence that is both futuristic and pre-historic. I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. But I can’t see it as a triumph. Not that I want to limit the potentiality of the human spirit, but majesty can be found in the smallest details of life. And when inspiration calls for colossal ambitious effort, it can instead be channeled through forms that don’t hold such tremendous material consequence and without trepidation becoming a structural component. With that said, I was in awe at the Guggenheim. A “temple of the spirit” was the intention behind the spiral design Frank Lloyd Wright implemented. When standing at the top of the atrium after viewing piece after piece of ardent expression, my head and knees went wobbly with vertigo. Which happened to get me into dancing mode for a couple night’s at Phish’s Baker’s Dozen residency at Madison Square Garden. When seeing the band in the 90’s at a much younger age, it was about ferocious jubilance coruscating one's consciousness. Now in the thick of middle age (for both me and the band members), the age appropriate tenor is joyful jubilance. And the type of joy that is for joy’s sake only. The more and more joy becomes about something else, or an object, from a result, with an intention, a conditional state, the less and less joyful joy becomes. In some areas of life, kinetic nonsense can be one’s guide. Blaze on.

2017-07-23

In this world ofas fine a pair of breastsas ever I sawthe fountain inMadison Squarespouts up of watera white treethat dies and livesas the rocking waterin the basinturns from the stonerimback upon the jetand rising therereflectively drops down again.

2017-07-19

I create timeI cannot create timeI’m frozen in placeI cannot be frozenI’m moving but don’t noticeI notice me moving, I pay attentionTo the small yet immense yetSmall movements that guideMy limbs, my hair growth, my joint oilsI don’t think about itI don’t feel it eitherI don’t have emotions right nowI see films of divine qualityI don’t see any filmsThis blackThis not blackTo me I amI am not to me notI walk with this hollownessI walk with this bloomingI’m moving outward foreverOnward eternally inwardI create all objects like shampoosAnd cats, I create nothingLike space and antimatterI resign to the clocks that keep timeI surrender to the clocks that don’t keep timeI’m sure about it, the color whiteI’m not sure about it, what is word?Oh, the loops and unloopsDestiny unfolds in my kneesI eat breakfast to begin the day

2017-07-17

Having no choice but to go down, the sunwithout a hint of its will to disobey, hungfor the moment suspended from the rapidlyvanishing blue of the sky, like a pearlfrom a pole, a streetlamp, or a chandelierwhich, with the emptying of the ballroom,stops swinging of a sudden and is so stillit seems it never could have moved. Still,

The sun was going to go down, but firstinvited my rowboat to join it, and so Idevised a journey into the eye, and embarkedon it, gliding without work of oars or armsover the clear and calm watery floor, coolas an ice-skating rink, peaceful as sleep,summary as myself in a boy's blue overalls,freedom's uniform, fishing at memory's end.

2017-07-06

Give me a death like Buddha's. Let me fallover from eating mushrooms Provençale,a peasant wine pouring down my shirtfront,my last request not a cry but a grunt.Kicking my heels to heaven, may I succumbtumbling into a rosebush after a lovehalf my age. Though I'm deposed, my tombshall not be empty; may my belly show abovemy coffin like a distant hill, my mourners comeas if to pass an hour in the country,to see the green, that old anarchy.

2017-07-04

Listening to Water--Stanley Moss

Water wanted to live.It went to the sun,came back laughing.Water wanted to live.It went to a treestruck by lightning.It came back laughing.It went to blood. It went to womb,It washed the face of every living thing.A touch of it came to death, a mold.A touch of it was sexual, brought life to death.It was Jubal, inventor of music,the flute and the lyre.

"Listen to waters," my teacher said,"then play the slow movementof Schubert's late Sonata in A,it must sound like the first birdthat sang in the world."

2017-07-02

Smiles--Stanely Moss

I argued with a dear friend, a psychiatristwho didn't think dogs smile and dream.I told him I thought butterflies, frogs and dogs dreamand smile- that the whole Bronx Zoo is like me,but I don't think every Greyhound bus,cheese, beggerman and thief is named Stanley.I've seen trees smiling, dreaming, kissing and kissed.I don't think the world is a mirror made by Jesus,rather sooner or later, like Columbusevery old sailor sees a mermaid, that Jesussmiled and dreamed like us, and Judashad a dog that smiled and dreamed like us.My good dog Bozo ran wild with my shoes.Because I sleep and dream old newssecrets I keep from myself, I smile in deceit,while my dog smiles, mounts a wolf at my feet.

2017-06-28

When I stop and think about what it’s all about I do come up with some answers, but they don’t help very much.

I think it is safe to say that life is pretty mysterious. And hard.

Life is short. I know that much. That life is short. And that it’s important to keep reminding oneself of it. That life is short. Just because it is. I suspect that each of us is going to wake up some morning to suddenly find ourselves old men (or women) without knowing how we got that way. Wondering where it all went. Regretting all the things we didn’t do. So I think that the sooner we realize that life is short the better off we are.

Now, to get down to the basics. There are 24 hours a day. There is you and there are other people. The idea is to fill these 24 hours as best one can. With love and fun. Or things that are interesting. Or what have you. Other people are most important. Art is rewarding. Books and movies are good fillers, and the most reliable.

Now you know that life is not so simple as I am making it sound. We are all a bit fucked up, and here lies the problem. To try and get rid of the fucked up parts, so we can just relax and be ourselves. For what time we have left.

2017-06-26

The rooks are cawing up and down the trees!Among their nests they caw. O sound I treasure,Ripe as old music is, the summer's measure,Sleep at her gossip, sylvan mysteries,With prate and clamour to give zest of these—In rune I trace the ancient law of pleasure,Of love, of all the busy-ness of leisure,With dream on dream of never-thwarted ease.O homely birds, whose cry is harbingerOf nothing sad, who know not anythingOf sea-birds' loneliness, of Procne's strife,Rock round me when I die! So sweet it wereTo die by open doors, with you on wingHumming the deep security of life.

2017-06-24

Estival

What’s unbound still continueson the other side of the alarm clock.Actually, not much of anything really.Coreless daybreak beyond motiveinto the fickle contours of clouds.Their therapy reckoned as I standup to the scale after the morning shower.Navigations shrugged. Slowly,I am again. Ionic soliloquyladen to more, hint of much less,corporeal vat of sunlight. Humidperception always with at leastone more day to go. And evolvingcomposure. All the faucet featuresof a world indigenous, makeshiftsI make my trouble in lucent deliriumto a soaked rapport charged freshby life shimmering encounters,mirage of expectant agelessness.